Windows is giving away ugly holiday sweaters with the Windows 95 logo

I hate that I love it.

In a pun-filled tweet, the Windows Twitter account announced that it’s giving away a select amount of “ugly sweaters” adorned with the blocky Windows 95 logo. 

It’s chunky. It’s knit. It’s filled with primary colors. It’s positively hideous! Despite all this, I still want the Windows sweater. 

“Soft wear.” Get it?

OK, Windows. I see you. I know what you’re doing. You, with your retro revival, and your manufactured “irreverence,” and your “social media buzz.” I GET IT. This stunt is meant to attract Millennial Me like the ’90s kid moth I am to your corporate nostalgia marketing flame.

It’s absolutely, entirely unclear how “lucky fans” will make themselves known as Fans to this brand Twitter account. People are still trying to show Microsoft they want to cop the sweater, anyway.

Windows has redesigned its logo several times over since this beautifully pixelated iteration. In 2012, it converted to something that looks more like a window pane.

“‘Windows’ really is a beautiful metaphor for computing and with the new logo we wanted to celebrate the idea of a window, in perspective,” Sam Moreau, Microsoft’s then Principal Director of User Experience for Windows said at the time of the redesign.

Apparently, the logo transformed from a traditional window into the multi-colored flag in the ’90s in order to show off just what Windows could do. 

“For Microsoft, the logo became a natural place to demonstrate the graphic capabilities of each new version of Windows,” the design firm behind the 2012 redesign wrote.

So, there’s some information about the logo. Does it make you want the sweater any more or less? No, but now you’ve learned something. Does it remind you that this is a stunt meant to drive Brand Allegiance to a multi-billion dollar company by capitalizing on our generation’s ambivalence about aging? 

Who the heck cares! Give me the dang sweater!

Windows, of course, is not the first entity think of putting a retro logo on an article of clothing. A Google search for “Windows sweater” returns hundreds of results. There are plenty of nostalgia-inspired products, too, like retro gaming consoles and reborn Tamagotchis. We just can’t seem to leave our childhoods in the past where they belong.

There’s also this beauty from a company called Shelfies.

The Windows sweater isn’t for sale. Yet! C’mon, show ’em we want it. All you have to do is swallow your pride and social media savvy and use the marketing person’s hashtag, people. They’re measuring our engagement. USE IT!